For Good
by SmutWithPlot
Summary: Vash's attempt and failure at living a normal life with Lina and her grandmother: he can't let go of his past and it won't let go of him. Companion piece to "Tension," focuses on the events of Episode 18 happening outside of Meryl's narrative.


**For Good**

When Vash woke, his arm was numb. It wasn't unexpected; every time he awoke—even from just a quick afternoon cat-nap—it seemed to take the rest of his body a moment to remember and recognize his left arm. Then that moment, just a split-second's time, would pass and the neural connections met the electrical signals from that remarkable prosthetic and Vash could wiggle his fingers again. He could "feel" the tiny hydraulic motors whirring when he moved his wrist, the same way he could feel the muscles flex in his right hand when he made a fist.

That instant of numbness had become infinitesimally longer and longer recently, and though Vash had tried to leave that life behind him, a gunman couldn't afford any such a weakness. He had lived so long by the quick-of-the-draw that he was becoming anxious about this slight deterioration. As hard as he tried not to think about it, he knew that eventually he would need to take a trip home again.

But he was _happy_ here…

It was nearly two years since the Humanoid Typhoon had died in Augusta, and more than a year and a half since Ericks had been born here in Kasted City. In the months after 5th Moon, Vash had let himself suffer for his sins, wandering aimlessly across the desert with no food or water until it was testing even _his_ questionable mortality.

_Is it still suicide if you just walk until your feet bleed and the sands swallow you up?_

He couldn't risk it. Vash headed for the nearest settlement, but he never made it to water. At the outskirts of town he just collapsed; the months of heat and fatigue and self-hatred were finally enough to break him. Somehow he managed to crawl into the nearest shade and sat with his back to a wall, collecting his battered shroud around him as a sudden wind picked up and threw sand at his already weather-beaten face.

Vash would have laughed, if he'd had the breath to spare. Having finally decided to live, he was going to die in this dead-end alley after all. Did _that_ count as suicide?

Then someone called to him from the street and Vash managed to pry his eyes open enough to squint through the dust and wind toward the mouth of the alley.

"Hello?"

A figure was taking shape through the blur of blowing sand and for one terrifying moment, Vash was sure he recognized the woman standing there. But then she stepped into the relative shelter of the alley and Vash could see her properly. Her short-cropped hair was a reddish-brown, not black, and she was taller and ganglier—and considerably younger—than he had originally thought. Vash would have guessed the girl's age at only thirteen or fourteen.

"Hello?" she said again, taking another hesitant step toward him. "Are you okay?"

Vash knew he was far from "okay," but other than being _alive_ he didn't know what he was. The girl finally came close enough to kneel down next to him. She opened her mouth to say something else but was cut off by a voice from the street.

"Lina!" someone snapped, in the commanding tone of one who'd had a great deal of experience trying to keep control of a teenager.

The girl flinched and looked back over her shoulder.

"I'm here, Grandma!" she called in reply. "There's a man here, I think he's hurt." Vash blinked up at the girl, the only energy he could muster, and wondered why she would even dare to approach a dying man in some deserted back alley.

Another figure was lumbering toward him now, a sturdy older woman with a pronounced limp. Her hair hadn't yet gone grey but Vash could see the toll years of hard labor had taken from her. She peered down at Vash through thick glasses and sucked in a harsh breath between her teeth.

"Good lord above," whispered the old woman. Then, sternly, "Lina, stay with him, I'll fetch the doctor."

The girl, Lina, nodded and sat at Vash's side with her back to the wall, too. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her cheek on her hands, looking up at him contemplatively. Vash stared down at her, puzzled; he couldn't understand how this girl was so unconcerned to be left alone with a stranger in the lengthening shadows of the evening.

"I'm Lina," said the girl, startling Vash from this train of thought. Lina gestured toward the old woman's retreating back. "That was my Grandma Cheryl. And you, you're…?" she prompted Vash.

He tried to think of a name—Vash the Stampede was finally _dead_—and all that came to him was a name that had meant something to someone else, once. It came out garbled, rasped through cracked lips and dry mouth and a voice long without use. When Lina asked, "Ericks?" Vash had just nodded. It didn't really matter, anyway.

Vash didn't remember much of the next few days, but Lina had later told him that some of the men from town had helped to carry him back to the hospital. The doctor had patched him up as best he could, and then they could do nothing but wait. Less than a week later Vash woke up healed, and Grandma Cheryl took him in, no questions asked and no arguments to the contrary accepted.

And that's how he came to be in this town, in this bed, waiting for that worrisome split-second to pass so he could use his left index finger to scratch an itch at the end of his long, pointed nose. Now Vash yawned and blinked up at the sky outside his window. The second sun was already half-risen; he had slept in past nearly 10:00 this morning. He rolled onto his back and grinned to himself, privately enjoying the odd hours he kept as Ericks. This was _early_, for him, now.

"_Ericks!_ I know you're in there, damn it, get up!"

Lina's voice penetrated the thin walls so easily it felt like she was shouting directly in his ear. The door practically shook as she pounded on it.

"Sorry, still asleep, come back later!" Vash sang out in reply, doing his best to suppress a small fit of giggles. Lina gave a strangled sort of scream, piercing and shrill, and stomped off down the hall.

Even before her footsteps had faded in retreat, Vash sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Hissing at the sudden cold of the floor on his bare feet, Vash hurriedly pulled them back up onto the mattress, sitting cross-legged, frowning down now at his mismatched hands. Resting in his lap, his open palms seemed to stare mockingly up at him: the left as he truly was, and the right as he was so desperately trying to pretend.

But there was nothing he could do to change any of it, so he closed his hands into fists and turned his attention to more pressing matters.

_Lina._

Vash shook his head with a sigh that was half affection and half resignation. That girl had such a talent for finding trouble in all possible places…

_Sound familiar?_

He let out a brief laugh as he dressed hurriedly (socks first, to save his poor feet from the floor), but the humor died from it almost immediately.

It might seem to others that Lina had only two settings: belligerent and asleep. But Vash had learned how to distinguish the different nuances to her belligerent moments. And now, however angry she sounded, Vash knew she was scared. Which meant she had done something stupid, and it was coming back to bite her in the ass.

Vash sighed again, snapping a pair of suspenders into place over his shoulders, and sat on the bed to pull on his shoes. Then he hung his head low, running both hands through his hair—it was getting so _long_—in a familiar gesture of exasperation.

Lina wasn't in her room, or in Grandma Cheryl's, or even down in the old cellar (her favorite place to hide, which she thought Vash didn't know about), but there were only so many places left for her to take refuge. Vash already knew where to find her when he left the house for the street outside.

Two dozen pistols were leveled at Vash's chest the moment he entered the saloon, but he just gave a wave to the room at large and every man's panicked expression turned to annoyance. There was a chorus of mumbled, "Oh, nevermind. It's just that idiot, Ericks."

It might have been insulting to another man, but to Vash it felt an awful lot like, "Oh, nevermind. _He belongs here._" Surely it was odd to find comfort in facing a firing squad every day, but Vash couldn't help smiling.

He found Lina at the bar, fidgeting.

"You gotta hide me," she was saying, as Vash approached. The barkeeper regarded her warily; he was all too familiar with this scenario by now.

"What is it this time, kiddo?" Vash asked, rapping his knuckles lightly on the top of her head. Lina spun on her heel and glared up at him, stabbing a finger hard in the middle of his chest; she missed the metal plates over his heart by just half an ich.

"Don't call me that!" Lina hissed. Vash just laughed, but he held his hands up in surrender. Lina turned back to the barkeeper with a pleading expression but the man just looked uncomfortably at Vash, in perhaps a silent plea for help.

"So," Vash prompted, ignoring the barkeep. "What did you do?"

"He started it," said Lina immediately. At Vash's raised eyebrow, she explained further. "He tried to grope me!" she hissed furiously.

"Why?" asked Vash, without really thinking. "There's nothing there to grab hold of." Lina gave a wordless scream of rage and lashed out at Vash, trying to kick him. He was laughing too hard to move out of the way quickly enough and she landed a good blow on his backside.

A loud, high-pitched voice from the street outside suddenly shrieked, "_Hey!_"

Vash spun to face the door, already knowing what would happen next.

"_Everybody down!_" he bellowed. Most people in the saloon were already on-edge and jumpy enough to obey, instantly flattening themselves to the floor. If anyone was surprised to hear the goofy, air-headed Ericks go deathly serious all of a sudden, they kept it to themselves.

It was fair warning, however, as some kind of explosion blew a huge hole straight through the front wall of the building and smashed its way out the back again. There were shouts of confusion and the musical tinkling of shattering glass as liquor bottles fell from the destroyed shelves behind the bar.

"Where's that little punk that struck my _lovely_ face with her heel?" someone demanded through the settling dust and debris, in that same grating, high-pitched voice. As the air cleared, Vash stood and looked out at the man who had spoken. The man was hugely fat, his gut half-oozing out of the too-small denim coveralls he wore. A single small tuft of yellow hair sprouted up at the very top of his head, and his nose turned up to show his over-large nostrils in a parody of a pig's snout. His right eye was covered with an eye patch that didn't quite fit properly and his good eye was wild with fury under a reddening mark over the left side of his face, which _did_ look rather suspiciously like a footprint.

"Heel?" said Vash, amusedly, looking down at Lina. "Looks like a whole foot, to me."

"Shut up!" hissed Lina, shoving Vash back toward the bar.

"That _is_ a fine print," someone murmured. "The kid's got talent."

Vash froze, breathless; he recognized that voice. A surreptitious glance to the end of the bar and a giant, shrouded cross confirmed what he already knew. He felt his heart sink heavily into the pit of his stomach.

He was _happy_ here…

"This man claims she saw her enter this building!" shouted the man outside. Vash didn't know his name—just another criminal claiming to be Vash the Stampede—but "Piggy" seemed like an appropriate nickname to call him, if only privately. "If he's wrong," Piggy continued, holding a terrified man in a choke-hold, "I'll wring his neck here and now for his trouble!"

Vash felt Lina take a half-step behind him, holding tight to the clasps of his suspenders where they met the back of his trousers.

"Ericks…" she whispered, too scared for _any_ kind of belligerence now.

"I'll count to three!" shouted Piggy, in his oddly high-pitched voice.

Vash sighed heavily.

"_One!_"

When Vash stepped forward, Lina almost pulled his suspenders free. Surprised, she let go and tried to grab his arm instead.

"What are you doing?" Lina asked, anxiously. Vash pushed her hands away and nodded gratefully at one of the men already reaching out to pull Lina further back into what little safety was offered by the rest of the saloon. "Wait—Ericks! What are you _doing?_"

Vash exited the saloon with both hands raised, palms out, and a grin plastered all over his face.

Piggy regarded him with narrowed eyes—er, narrowed _eye_.

"Who the hell are you?" the man demanded.

"Just a friend," said Vash amiably, shrugging. "I'm really sorry you didn't find it funny," he went on, gesturing vaguely at the footprint on Piggy's face with one hand. "She's just a 15-year-old kid who thinks she knows everything! Forgive and forget?"

Piggy let fly a cannon blast that passed only iches from Vash's head and though it rang loudly in his ear, he didn't flinch. Once the resultant cloud of smoke cleared a little, he allowed himself a theatrical scream and an exaggerated, full-bodied recoil.

"Now, send out the girl!" Piggy ordered, holding the cannon so near to the captive man's head that he cringed away from the searing hot metal of the barrel.

"Hmm, well," said Vash, grimacing comically. "_That_ I can't do. After all, you look like you want to kill her!" He gave a big, open-mouthed guffaw before sobering again. "Then again, I won't ask for a free favor. If I do this—"

Vash knelt, prostrating himself before the other man and his gang. He ignored the stunned gasps from the saloon behind him.

"—will you let her off?"

For a few moments there was only a shocked silence, and then Piggy gave a great booming laugh and Vash could almost _hear _the man's fat stomach jiggling.

"That's not good enough," Piggy said, finally, still chuckling. "Since you're on all fours, you could at least act like a dog. Buck-naked, of course!"

"Do you mean that?" Vash asked without hesitation, looking up sharply. Ericks was gone. This was Vash the Stampede. He couldn't really help it; his voice had gone to that low and dangerous tone without even meaning it to. "Keep your word," he ordered.

While the other man couldn't possibly fail to notice the change in Vash's demeanor, he didn't seem to recognize the warning in these last few words. Piggy's expression hardened, perhaps trying to identify the change, but he nodded once at Vash.

"_Don't do it!_" came Lina's voice, suddenly. Vash almost turned to tell her to look away, not wanting her to be forced to watch—but he knew better than to take his eyes off Piggy, who was just as likely to shoot him in the back as he was to wait for Vash to strip down and bark like a dog.

So Vash just stared the other man down and let his suspenders fall first, sliding them off his shoulders before beginning to unbutton the dirty-white shirt he wore.

Despite Vash's myriad and frequent injuries, few people in town had actually seen the full extent of the damage and scarring that covered every ich of his skin, and he knew that many of the murmurs and exclamations now were just as much about the state of his body as about the humiliation he was willingly submitting to.

He didn't care.

As Vash shucked his trousers, he wondered suddenly how he had come to this. Two years ago he could hardly bare himself to the only woman he had ever… Well. The first woman in over a century who would have him, anyway. And there had been women, plenty of them, back when he was whole, before he'd been torn apart and pieced back together again.

Then he spent a hundred years ashamed and afraid, until _she_ somehow wormed her way through all his defenses and bridged that vast distance he kept between himself and others—a distance he maintained to keep _them_ safe. But she'd been stubborn and brazen and doggedly managed to force her way into his life, and ultimately into his trust—and that was something he had _never_ expected. But even with that trust, he remembered how difficult and terrifying it had been to show her the truth.

And now he was naked to an audience of dozens: the saloon behind him, Piggy and his goons, all the eyes half-hidden through shuttered windows of the homes across the street. Now all of them could see what he really was. And he didn't care. Why didn't he care?

Vash could hear people still muttering, both in the saloon and in the posse of thugs facing him, all in disbelief that he would be willing to sacrifice his pride in such a degrading way.

Sacrifice his pride.

_Ha._

Vash cracked a small smile. The joke was on them, then; he never had any to begin with.

So now he did his best dog impression, though Vash felt it was a little rough around the edges. He was out of practice, after all, with no skirts to chase in this town. Or rather, with the limitations of the role he'd taken on here (Ericks would never do such a thing; Vash had decided long ago that Ericks was a much more upstanding citizen than Vash the Stampede had been).

The sand digging into his knees as he cantered about on all fours was becoming an annoyance and Vash hoped Piggy would have had his fun long enough sometime soon. He doubted it, though, and was surprised when the man's raucous laughter subsided after just a few minutes.

"Thanks for the entertainment!" chortled Piggy, as his men continued laughing. Then he leveled the cannon at Vash with a wicked grin, growling, "How about I leave you a big, fat tip?"

Vash could move fast enough to avoid it, but what about the saloon behind him? He jumped to his feet and put up both hands again, ready to make another plea for mercy, but Piggy's grin faltered suddenly and his good eye widened slightly. Vash realized the other man was looking at something _behind_ him, apparently something that scared Piggy enough to back down.

"Let's just go," Piggy muttered, looking away.

Vash had a few ideas what that "something" might have been—that giant cross had been hard to miss—but he tried not to think about it for now. Instead he just watched Piggy's caravan retreating for quite awhile before he turned to collect his clothes again.

When he felt the sudden, searing pain of the bullet in his back, Vash was understandably startled; though in retrospect, he wasn't all that surprised.

_Oh, hell. Here we go again._


End file.
